Komen Grantee Lunch

Friday April 27, 2007

We've been making Pretty and Strong components for over three years now and it's become a regular-sort-of-day thing. Today I attended the annual Komen Oregon Grantees Luncheon along with Diane Citrin, our Human Resources manager, and was reminded the importance of this work.

We attend two Komen luncheons each year, one to honor donors, and today's event to honor and award the groups and programs granted with Komen funds. Today is the big deal if you ask any of us privileged enough to attend. Receiving an award and snapping a few photos later this year is part of the protocol the Foundation must perform. As corporate donors, we recognize the impact our association with breast cancer research has. So we oblige the process, receive our award with a smile and proudly display it in the office and at events. It's the Grantees Luncheon, however, that encourages and inspires. Walking into the hotel ballroom on a sunny Friday afternoon, you lose yourself with thoughts of wanting to be elsewhere. It's been a rainy winter and we're ready to just be outside. Just a few moments after the program begins, you are reminded that it is necessary to be here and that a room full of strangers is as invigorating as the season's first singletrack session.

Our local Susan G. Komen Foundation affiliate granted over 1.3 million dollars today to organizations across the region, many of them unknown to mainstream society. Diane and I were seated with NARA of Portland, an organization dedicated to assisting Native American people. They were overjoyed to be a recipient of funds as they could now announce the hiring of a new medical director that allowed their over-taxed outreach manager more time to do her own work. NARA assists a community of people whose native language has no word for cancer and, therefore, very little cultural history of how to address the disease. They have built an incredible program in short time. Wonderful people all around us, that's for sure.

When you work with a national organization, it's easy to get lost in the scale of the numbers. Today's total grants, as mentioned, were well over a million dollars. While our Pretty and Strong promotion has been more successful than we ever imagined, we do not approach the numbers given by the mega-corporations or needed by the scores of programs just within our own city. We've done well, but we're not writing million dollar checks. But as I listened to each of the grantees speak about their programs, I was struck with the reminder that we are not here to save numbers. We are here to save people and that can be done.

We all fall victim to percentages, especially when discussing something as big and far-reaching as cancer. You hear stories of success rates, total populations reached, and the likelihood of occurrence. But today, as each grantee spoke, they gave numbers, actual numbers. I recall one in particular from the representative of an outreach program for Russian immigrants here in Portland. She proudly noted that 73 mammograms have been performed by her organization since its founding. Now 73 of anything isn't going to get anyone's attention on national TV. Good luck getting time on Capitol Hill with anything signed by 73 people. But I can see 73 people in my mind. It's likely that you can name 73 people you know. Real people, not numbers and not percentages. Those people are mothers and daughters and friends and, yes, it's a clichéd appeal, but keep thinking about the number as it radiates outward to more real people.

73 women received a test that assured them of their continued good health or at least put them on a path to improve it. 73! I can't shake that number out of my head. Here's another one - 2007.

It's 2007 and we still have trouble getting medical care to our citizens. I take it for granted that when I need something, I go get it. I guess I also believe that, if I can't help myself, somebody will look out for me. The Komen affiliate does just this by awarding Rural Transportation Grants to support programs assisting men and women who live far removed from necessary medical care. It amazed me that something as simple as a gas-card program means the difference between someone receiving care or not.

It's pretty easy to translate a multi-million dollar foundation serving hundreds-of-thousands of people into a figure manageable in your own mind with the Rural Transportation Grant. 10 dollars, maybe 20, and someone who needs care can go get it. We raise that kind of dough in just a few minutes on our busy days with Pretty and Strong.

Does our proud, little program make a difference? I've got 73 people you can ask.
-Chris DiStefano
Marketing & Communications
Chris King Precision Components

I'll take a moment here to say that this was an emotional afternoon for me. One of my best friends begins chemotherapy next week to combat the onset of breast cancer. She's in Minnesota and I haven't been able to visit her through all of this. When all the survivors in the room were asked to stand at today's luncheon I just barely held back tears knowing that each one of those women, like her, had somebody out there just like me. On behalf of everyone much too far away from someone they love, be strong, get well, and I'll see you soon.